


When All is Said and Done

by 8brains



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 11:12:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7799488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8brains/pseuds/8brains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy, in the midst of his time with Anna Ripley, reflects on the the deaths of his family members.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When All is Said and Done

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why my brain wanted to write a torture fic for the De Rolo family. But here we are.

It starts with his father, and honestly he can’t even recall if he saw it.   
It happened so fast. One minute they were finishing up desert and the next everyone was screaming and his face was being pushed into his lemon sorbet.   
He’s only sure that his father is dead when he’s thrown into the cell next to his body, a crossbow bolt through his neck. There are no other wounds that he can see from his vantage point and he’s too afraid to go closer. His brain, frustratingly reminds him that it would have taken minutes to bleed out. Choking on his own blood. He tries to count the number of stone blocks in the walls but his eyes always wander back to the body.

\--

His sister goes next, at least for him.   
The children are separated. He doesn’t know where they’re taken but he’s brought up to the highest tower in the castle. The one that overlooks the mountains. He thinks they will try to scare him into speaking, all the way there he tries to tell them he doesn’t know anything. But no one holds him over the edge. She takes a whip to his back instead. Something to pass the time, until Vesper and Julius arrive.   
He’s pushed into one of the guards, the open wounds rubbing against the man’s armor and chaffing them further. She paces leisurely before them but he can’t hear her anymore, the sound of his own heart deafening him to anything else.   
He should have been listening though, because in the next moment a guard drags Vesper to the edge. He can hear Julius next to him, yelling, struggling. He tries but he can only whimper.   
She asks again. He doesn’t know. _Please_ , please let her go. He’ll do anything. Please just, let her go. 

And she does, there one second, gone the next. She falls onto the mountain side. He can hear her scream as he goes. Julius stills next to him. He faints in the arms of his guard. 

\--

Julius is third.   
He comes to and he’s strapped to a chair facing his brother. He’s screaming as she rolls hot pokers over his arm. He’s noticed. She smiles at him, and he’s never felt so nauseous in his life. He knows he’s next.   
They spend hours like that, she hurts him and asks Julius questions. Then when she gets bored she switches and the questions turn to him.   
Julius dies screaming, it’s high pitched and awful. He tells him not to tell her anything. To be brave. But he has nothing to tell them anyway. He couldn’t make something up if he tried.   
What’s underneath the castle?  
The crypts, what else would there be?   
One final push, one final scream. The guard asks if they should try and bring him back, but she says to leave him. That he’s useless now. 

\--

Julius is thrown into the cell with his father, one on top of the other. He tries not to look at them, and tries not to sleep. Who knows where he’ll wake up, what he might see. He keeps his eyes open as long as possible, and then his body collapses.

It’s hours after he’s woken up that they come for him. He’s given bread and water, and the guard tells him all that screaming from upstairs is his mother. The guard wonders aloud as he walks away if she screamed that much in bed. That maybe _she’ll_ give him the chance to find out before they’re done with her.   
He eats his bread, and drinks and his water, and tries his best not vomit. 

\--

His mother is next.   
He’s lead into a sitting room on the first floor. His mother is sobbing in a chair to his right. He cannot see her face. On floor at her feet lays Oliver, and behind him Whitney and Ludwig laid against the wall. He thought they might be sleeping if it weren’t for all the blood.   
The guards push him in, and for a moment it’s just the two of them alone. He drops to his knees, takes her hands. She hugs him, screaming and crying the whole time. His mother asks about the others. He lies to her. He doesn’t know what else to do.   
It takes three guards to pry his mother off him. He’s too weak to resist the one holding his arms, or maybe he just knows it’s useless to try. When she comes she doesn’t ask questions this time. She only smiles at him while his mother screams. She begs for mercy, she doesn’t want to see another one of her children die.   
She comes very close to him, and smiles as she shows him her knife. He cries, he can’t help it. She laughs at him then and pats his face.  
His mother gets wish when her throat is opened. 

\--  
And then it’s just _them_. For days just the two of them in a room, she goes until he passes out. He wakes up in a cell with bread and water and his family rotting next to him. She comes for him, she’s stopped asking questions. She knows he can’t tell her what she wants to know, but perhaps she can learn something else from their time together. Anders comes and whispers to her sometimes. He begs him for help, but Anders only spits at his feet. 

\--

Cassandra is the last to go.   
He thinks it’s a dream at first, when she comes to him. He hadn’t dared to hope she was still alive. When he realizes he’s awake he refuses to go. This is a trick, an illusion of some kind. She’s trying to give him hope so that she can see how deeply he will break.   
But Cassandra gets frustrated with him and pulls him up anyway. He’s too weak to resist, so he follows her. Tells himself he’s just playing along, she can’t hurt him if he never believes it. He know when they exit the tunnel she’ll be waiting for him. Maybe she’ll kill Cassandra in front of him, maybe Cassandra was never real.   
And then they leave, and there’s no one. And Cassandra is still dragging him along, only he’s started running with her. She’s crying, and smiling at him. He came back. She was afraid he had gone somewhere else but here he was, and now they were running. And now they hear dogs barking, and voices. They make it halfway down the hill. The river is their only hope. It could drown them, he’s scared. She tells him she’ll hold onto to him. She grabs his hand and counts.   
1   
2  
3  
Arrows come popping out from her chest. She falls and rolls onto the bank. The dogs are still barking. The voices are still yelling. A second round is being loaded. Maybe it’s a trick. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe she’s standing just beyond the archers, waiting for him to start screaming.   
He takes one last look at Cassandra, bleeding out into the snow.   
And then he jumps.


End file.
